Luke 9:51-62
A Sermon Preached by the Reverend Dr. Howard W. Boswell, Jr.
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 27, 2010
Kenmore Presbyterian Church
Kenmore, New York
As I said last Sunday, my Dad grew up in the rural South, North Carolina, to be precise, during the Thirties and Forties. When Dad was only a child, his father died. After a while, his mother moved to Washington, D.C. to find work. Along with his sisters and brothers, he went to live on his grandparents’ farm, which I visited a few times on our way to Myrtle Beach as a child.
My dad and his brothers and sisters worked the farm and, as I found out, their grandfather hired them out to surrounding farms. In those days, when you plowed a field, you didn’t use a tractor. Instead, you used a mule, or a team of mules. Now, mules may be among the most ornery creatures ever made. A cross between a horse and a donkey, they are stupid and mean. To plow a straight furrow with a mule took strength of body to hold on to the plow, strength of will to steer the mule, and strength of mind to maintain focus on a point in the distance.
To the third would-be follower who came to him, Jesus said, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Those words reminded me what my father learned from plowing fields with mules. These lessons might teach us about how to follow Christ without being distracted from our destiny in him.
We learn the first lesson about how to live our lives as disciples in Luke 9:51, “When the days drew near for (Jesus) to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” Luke frames everything from here until Jesus enters Jerusalem as a journey. While Jesus makes stops along the way, he remains focused on Jerusalem and what will happen there. He keeps the cross and the empty tomb before him every step of the way.
Now, I’ve never plowed a field, but I understand that in order to make straight furrows, one has to focus on a point of reference and never lose sight of it. As followers of Jesus, he is that point of reference for us. In Philippians 3: 12-14, Paul admits he has not yet reached the goal. Yet, he affirms:
I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
Paul’s words remind me of an African-American Spiritual, “Eyes on the Prize.” One verse says:
I got my hand on the gospel plow
Won’t take nothing for my journey now
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on
Yet, all of us know how difficult it is to keep our eyes on the prize. Our hand keeps slipping of that gospel plow. We find it hard to hold on. Here’s where we can learn a lot from plowing a field with a mule!
The first lesson is: “Never get mad at the mule!” No matter how ornery a mule is, you gain absolutely nothing by getting angry at it, because it is, well, ornery! Remember what I said, mules are mean and stupid! They define dumb animal! The only thing likely to happen if you kick a mule is the mule will kick back. From what I gather, mules kick much harder than we do.
Sometimes, we encounter people who are like mules. You know, they’re just plain ornery, like the ones Jesus’ advance team encounter in that Samaritan village. A lot of painful history passed between Samaritans and Jews. They hated each other, so no wonder when the villagers rejected Jesus, James and John offered to give them the first century equivalent of a shock and awe campaign. These sons of thunder suggest in The Message: “Master, do you want us to call a bolt of lightning down out of the sky and incinerate them?” Instead, Jesus rebukes them and keeps on moving.
We need to remember while Jesus commanded people to come after him, he never coerced them. He invited men and women to follow him, but he never insisted they do. Instead, throughout his ministry, Jesus practiced what some call “detaching with love” from those who rejected him. He remained free to follow God’s call, to keep his face set toward Jerusalem, and left them free to follow their choice and experience its consequences.
I wish contemporary followers of Jesus could learn this from the Master. We gain nothing by giving people a hard time for rejecting the good news. It grieves me when I hear voices raised in anger to announce the good news by saying how our nation is in trouble, because we’ve rejected our Christian principles. Wouldn’t it make more sense to speak the truth in love? Wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on compassion for others rather than condemnation? Remember: Never get mad at the mule!
Plowing a field with a mule teaches us another important listen about discipleship. We should not take it lightly, like the first would-be follower who comes to Jesus, breathless, saying, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus reminds him of the costs of following him. While the New Revised Standard Version may sound more familiar, The Message startles us into awareness, saying, “Are you ready to rough it? We’re not staying in the best inns, you know.” Remember I said plowing a field takes “strength of body to hold on to the plow, strength of will to steer the mule, and strength of mind to maintain focus on a point in the distance.” To follow Jesus requires similar strength. He reminds us it takes everything we have when he says, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
On Tuesday night, I spoke with Elizabeth, an old friend from my Doctor of Ministry group at San Francisco. I told her about our recent Natural Church Development Survey and our limiting factor of Passionate Spirituality. Now, Elizabeth taught spirituality at the Southern Campus of San Francisco and she is a spiritual director. I listen when she speaks about spirituality. She said the problem is many people don’t understand how difficult it really is to live spiritual lives. I agree, because we live in a time when convenience comes before commitment in congregations, when people seek quick fixes, rather than long term healing.
One of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors may be A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society by Eugene H. Peterson. He takes the title from an unlikely source, the atheist Frederick Nietzche, who wrote in Beyond Good and Evil, “The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’… is that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.” Jesus knows following him requires such surrender for the long haul. Just as a field takes hours, even days of hard work to plow, life in Christ cannot be fruitful, if it’s only a passing fad.
The third lesson about plowing a field with a mule is keep moving forward. You can’t keep going over the same ground again. You have to leave the past behind you. Jesus comes across a person along the way and he invites him to follow him. Well, the man says, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Now, it appears to be a reasonable request. In that society, the duty to the dead was considered sacred. Yet, Jesus answers in a way that seems less than compassionate, maybe even a little cruel.
Yet, in The Message, Peterson pulls out the meaning in what Jesus said, “First things first. Your business is life, not death. And life is urgent: Announce God’s kingdom!” For many of us, we forget to keep first things first. We focus more on death than life. We keep going over past hurts until the pain prevents us from any forward movement. We put off Jesus’ call, because we still have guilt over what we did. No place do we find more truth in Peterson’s paraphrase than in the church of Jesus Christ. We forget how urgent life is; we forget our business is life, not death. We fail to recall our first chief end: “the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind.” Unless things change, they will list the cause of death for this church and others like it as “Forgot to live!”
I’ve already suggested the final lesson we can learn about following Christ from plowing a field with a mule near the beginning of this sermon. Remember I said, “in order to make straight furrows, one has to focus on a point of reference and never lose sight of it.” When one plows, one ought never look back, because one will lose sight of the point of reference. The same lesson applies when running a race. Many runners, riders, and drivers lose and even crash, when they pause to check what’s behind them.
The last would-be follower of Jesus is like the first, eager to follow him, except he has other things on his mind. Peterson really captures what we would say, if Jesus called us today, “I’m ready to follow you, Master, but first excuse me while I get things straightened out at home.” We have so many things we have to look after, so many people depending on us, Lord, really we’d love to follow you, but we have to take care of them, then we’ll get back to you. Yet, we know how Jesus answers in the New Revised Standard Version, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Peterson puts it in plain language, “No procrastination. No backward looks. You can’t put God’s kingdom off till tomorrow. Seize the day.”
“Seize the day!” Carpe diem! The only time when we can follow Jesus is now. The only place to which he leads us is the kingdom of God. Listen, I know life happens. Sometimes, we can feel exhausted by the strength it takes to hold on to the plow, the strength it takes to steer the mule, and the strength it takes to focus on a point in the distance. So, let me suggest something. Let’s let go of the reins of our lives and let Jesus steer. Let’s seek God’s strength to help us hold on. You and I, all we have to do is to keep our hands on the gospel plow. Let’s take nothing for our journey now. Keep our eyes on the prize, hold on!
©2010 Howard W. Boswell, Jr.
Luke 8:26-39
A Sermon Preached by the Reverend Dr. Howard W. Boswell, Jr.
Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 20, 2010
Kenmore Presbyterian Church
Kenmore, New York
The pastor who did my father’s memorial service asked my family and me for things we would remember about Dad. Among other things, I said I can’t listen to Johnny Cash sing and not think of my dad. When we went through pictures, we found one of Dad, all dressed in black! I always thought they looked a little alike. They were about the same age and shared a hard, rural upbringing. I remember watching The Johnny Cash Show with my dad.
Another thing they shared was addiction. Johnny went through rehab more than once. My father nearly died due to alcoholism when I was a junior in college. On American Recordings, Cash included “The Beast in Me,” a song by friend and former son-in-law, singer-songwriter, Nick Lowe. Lowe wrote “The Beast in Me” with Johnny Cash in mind. It captures the conflict Cash knew, a fight my father faced, a struggle with which I wrestle, in different ways.
“The Beast in Me” begins,
The beast in me is caged by frail and fragile bars.
Restless by day, and by night, rants and rages at the stars.
God help the beast in me.
The beast in me has had to learn to live with pain,
And how to shelter from the rain,
And in the twinkling of an eye might have to be restrained.
God help the beast in me.
This song serves as an image of what many endure who suffer from addiction, as Cash and my father did; from depression and co-dependency, as I do; and from emotional distress and mental illness. Many of us understand all too well these words from Paul in Romans chapter 7, verse 15, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Some of us sense all too well what Paul means when he writes in verse 24, “Wretched (one) that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Yet, even amid the dying, we still cry, “God help the beast in me!” and hope to proclaim, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
“The Beast in Me” paints a portrait of the Gerasene demoniac before Jesus came ashore on the other side of the sea. Scholars disagree about the exact location, but all of them agree it was in Gentile territory, outside of the ordinary. When I went to Jordan in 2001, I saw some of the land of the Gerasenes. Its nearly lunar landscape made it easy to imagine the demoniac’s life before Jesus came. No longer fit to live among the living, he dwells in the land of the dead, running around the tombs, naked. Sometimes, for public safety, the residents place him in shackles, but these “frail and fragile bars” are no match for his restless mind. He breaks them and runs to the wilderness, where he rants and rages at the stars.
Most of us may have problems with the notion of demon possession. Some suggest the Gerasene demoniac was bipolar. They imagine with the right medication, with the right treatment, and a little self-control, this poor man could be right as rain. Yet, we need to accept mental illness and addiction still carry a stigma in our society, even within the church. Many of the homeless who wander the streets of our cities, from whom we walk away when we meet them on the sidewalk, suffer from a chronic mental illness or addiction. In our society, we still do not show those who suffer mental illness or addiction the same compassion we show toward those with physical ailments. Even insurance companies do not cover behavioral health at the same levels as they do physical health. We seem to think since it’s all in their heads, it’s not real or that they aren’t strong, like we are.
We may not know it, but we meet people like the Gerasene demoniac every day. They may even sit next to us in these pews. Some quietly suffer. They endure the pain and the added burden of shame we place on them. Others demonstrate their pain in inappropriate ways. We either ignore them or send them packing when they disrupt our calm. Yet, like the villagers, we fear them, but even more we may fear what happens when they become better. When they become whole, we begin to sense how much we need them to be broken. They let us not look at the beasts in us.
I nearly left out the bridge and last verse of “The Beast in Me,” because I believed they didn’t work with the passage, until I realized how they speak to our lack of awareness of or honesty about our own struggles. Yet, now, I see now how well they fit,
Sometimes it tries to kid me that it’s just a teddy bear
And even somehow manages to vanish in the air
And that is when I must beware
Of the beast in me that everybody knows;
They’ve seen him out dressed in my clothes
Patently unclear if it’s New York or New Year.
God help the beast in me.
The beast in me.
Sometimes, we call ourselves to confession with these words from 1 John 1:8-9, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Other times, we use these words, “We cannot come before God unless we are first honest with ourselves about who we are, about the mistakes we make, and about how well or poorly we care for others.” We like to kid ourselves our sins aren’t so serious. We like to pretend we know who we are. We like to excuse our mistakes and explain away our lack of compassion. Yet, in those moments, we must be aware the beast lies within every son of Adam, within each daughter of Eve. Though we were born to bear our Father’s likeness, we mar the resemblance. Though Jesus died on the cross and rose from the tomb to save us, we think it only offers us a ticket to heaven, rather than a way to live lives of wholeness here on earth. Though we received the anointing of the Spirit at our baptism, we fail to listen to the still, small voice that leads us to fullness of life.
We may kid ourselves, but Jesus doesn’t take the many voices that seek our souls so lightly. As soon as he sees the Gerasene demoniac, he commands the unclean spirit to come out of him. When the man cries out, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” and begs him to stop due to the torment he feels, Jesus continues, asking, “What is your name?” He answers, “Legion.” So we grasp what it means: A legion was a division in the Roman Army, composed of three to four thousand soldiers! Yet, Jesus sends this occupying army of demons into the herd of swine, who run into the depths of the sea, which Jesus already silenced as the disciples and he crossed. Only then does the man appear, restored and fully clothed.
Over the last several years, I’ve wanted to preach on this passage, because it speaks to me of my own struggles with depression and co-dependency. Sometimes, I ignore them, thinking they’re just a teddy bear, but I know they are “The Beast in Me.” They keep me from living in joy and peace. Yet, beyond my own struggles, I wanted to preach on this passage, because I know many of you share similar struggles. Some of you speak to me directly about them. Yet, mostly, I see them reflected in your eyes and hear them echoed in your words. Nowadays, many of us listen to Legion, many conflicting voices at work, through the media, in our families, from our friends, who tell us who we are and what we ought to do.
I want to make sure to share the good news in every sermon and I fear I’ve spent too much time on its opposite so far. Yet, if this passage tells me anything, it suggests how sometimes good news and bad news sound a lot alike. All of us contend with “The Beast in Me.” All of us have issues that we would rather not address in our lives. All of us carry around some kind of pain. Yet, Jesus addresses us with authority, invites us to name the demons, and offers to take away, or, at least, lessen the pain. He alone can help “the beast in me,” but only if we place ourselves at his feet, not kidding ourselves about our control, being brutally honest about where we fall short. He will receive us and he will restore us. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
©2010 Howard W. Boswell, Jr.
Luke 7:11-17
A Sermon Preached by the Reverend Dr. Howard W. Boswell, Jr.
Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 6, 2010
Kenmore Presbyterian Church
Kenmore, New York
In the June Crossroads, I wrote about a question people have about worship. Often they ask me, “What’s Ordinary Time?” I explained how it simply refers to those weeks in the church year that do not fall in Advent, Christmas, Lent, or Easter. Yet, I added how “during Ordinary Time, we discover… Jesus makes the everyday anything but ordinary by his presence.”
According to psychologist, Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, we live our ordinary lives from a set of beliefs about how the world works. We believe bad things will not happen. We expect events will make sense. We assume all events will fall into neat categories of good and bad. We may argue we know how life is not fair, how tragedy doesn’t make sense. Yet, when the world comes crashing down around us, nearly all of us ask, “How could this happen? Or why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?” Tragedy turns our ordinary lives upside down. It pushes us beyond our everyday understanding.
We do not need to know anything about the status of widows in Jesus’ time to feel our way into the scene we encounter in Luke 7:11-17. We grasp how at this moment, for this one woman, the worst possible thing happens, nothing about it makes sense, and the death of her son, her only son casts aside every neat category. In Jesus’ time, widows were pushed to the margins of society. Yet, this woman found herself pushed even further. With the death of her son, her only son, everything she had would revert to her husband’s family. She had nowhere to turn, except to the kindnesses of strangers.
She finds herself at the gate of the village of Nain, inconsolable in grief. You see, even today, people in the Middle East do not keep mourning the sterile, silent affair we do in the West. They mourn loudly, with many tears. The scene Luke depicts could be seen repeated in villages and towns from Gaza to the Golan Heights, from Tel Aviv to Amman. The whole village joins in grieving and nothing can stop the tears.
Except, on this day, the kindness of a stranger stop the tears. His first words to the weeping widow are “Do not weep!” Of course, we know who this stranger is and where he’s been. He’s just been in Capernaum, where he healed the centurion’s slave, and celebrated this Gentile’s faith as unlike anything he’d ever seen. The slave was nearly dead, when the centurion told Jesus, “But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.”
Yet, here at an ordinary funeral in Nain, Jesus sees the widow’s grief. He knows her world crashes down around her and her life and her livelihood lies dead beneath the burial cloth. For the first time, Luke calls Jesus the Lord, as if to signal what’s about to happen. Yet, it’s love that gives the Lord power over death itself. Really something more than love compels him; it’s compassion. Jesus feels her loss deep down, in his gut. He crosses the ordinary barrier between men and women to speak to her. He breaks another barrier when he touches the bier, risking ritual corruption, so that he might bring resurrection. He speaks to the young man, addresses him as a person, saying, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” When he rises, he returns him to his mother, restoring her son, her life, her world to her.
I don’t need to tell you how we experience moments like the widow. Maybe, we may not face the absolute destitution she did, but we need to know there are places on this planet where women in her situation would. Yet, we know how sad it is to bury a parent, a sibling, even a spouse, but to bury a child is tragic. My experience as a pastor proves Ronnie Janoff-Bulmann’s theory, because when children precede their parents in death, it dashes the way we think the natural order of life works.
Yet, we know other tragedies that defy our ordinary way of looking at life. A man sacrifices everything for his wife and children, only to find out how she’s chosen another. A woman works for a company for decades, only to discover her pension’s gone. A family realizes a dream and buys a home, only to have it wrecked in the mortgage crisis. A nation watches as an oil spill threatens to destroy a region barely recovering from one of the worst hurricanes in history, only to learn how fragile a thing is life. I didn’t really need to tell you the story again, because we live it everyday. It’s the tragic reality that confounds our core beliefs and makes us wonder, “Where in the world is God in the midst of all of it?”
We can find the answer to our question in the question itself. God is in the midst of all of it, if we opened our eyes and our hearts to those moments that are anything but ordinary, when we hear Jesus say, “Do not weep!” when we feel Jesus’ touch, when we answer his command and rise! This story of the widow of Nain is unusual for a couple of reasons. First, only Luke tells it and he tells it beautifully. It’s really a masterpiece! It points back to the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. It points ahead to when Jesus himself, a son, an only son will die, and be raised by the command of his Father. It reminds us of a central theme in his Gospel, Jesus’ love of the oppressed and marginalized as a sign of God’s kingdom.
Yet, I find one thing most unusual. We’d miss it, if we weren’t looking for it. Almost every other miracle includes a request. The centurion asks Jesus to heal his slave. Jesus’ mother asks him to do something about the lack of wine. The blind, the lame, the leper, everyone asks Jesus to do something, even if he has to ask them first, What do you want me to do for you?” even if they only manage to ask, “Lord, have mercy!”
Yet, here, the widow makes no request, shows no faith. We can’t even say for certain whether she knew who Jesus was. She doesn’t ask, because she doesn’t know anything can happen. Instead, Jesus sees her need and out of compassion, from sheer grace, he raises her son from the dead and returns him to her.
Things that are anything but ordinary happen around us and to us all the time. Maybe, we don’t ask for them to happen, but they happen anyway. We may not recognize them as miracles, but that is what they are. It’s a miracle when the tears finally stop and we begin to heal. It’s a miracle when the man finds the strength to forgive her, maybe not for her sake, but for his. It’s a miracle when the woman receives help from others to rebuild her life. It’s a miracle when the family finds a way to make a new home. It will be a miracle when the marshes of Louisiana return to life, one day, if we work and pray.
Yet, the greatest miracle may be when we see Jesus for who he really is. With those villagers in Nain, we may be afraid at first to realize it, but we will come to glorify God for he is a great prophet, even more he is our Savior and Lord, the only Son of the Most High. In him, God looks favorably upon us and visits us in the losses of our lives, restoring us to life and wholeness.
©2010 Howard W. Boswell, Jr.
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